She wondered if he might have been poisoned. The bishop's envoy had been so anxious to leave he had nearly run Agnes down, and he had told Eliwys not to disturb him. The church had done things like that in the thirteen hundreds, hadn't they? Mysterious deaths in the monastery and the cathedral. Convenient deaths.
But that made no sense. The bishop's envoy and the monk would not have hurried off and given orders not to disturb the victim when the whole point of poison was to make it look like botulism or peritonitis or the dozen other unaccountable things people died of in the Middle Ages. And why would the bishop's envoy poison one of his own underlings when he could demote him, the way Lady Imeyne wanted to demote Father Roche.
"Is it the cholera?" Lady Eliwys said.
No, Kivrin thought, trying to remember its symptoms. Acute diarrhea and vomiting with massive loss of body fluids. Pinched expression, dehydration, cyanosis, raging thirst.
"Are you thirsty?" she asked.
The clerk gave no sign that he had heard. His eyes were half-closed, and they looked swollen, too.
Kivrin laid her hand on his forehead. He flinched a little, his reddened eyes flickering open and then closed.
"He's burning with fever," Kivrin said, thinking, cholera doesn't produce this high a fever. "Fetch me a cloth dipped in water."
"Maisry!" Eliwys snapped, but Rosemund was already at her elbow with the same filthy rag they must have used on her.
At least it was cool. Kivrin folded it into a rectangle, watching the priest's face. He was still panting, and his face contorted when she laid the rag across his forehead, as if he was in pain. He clutched his hand to his belly. Appendicitis? Kivrin thought. No, that usually was accompanied by a low-grade fever. Typhoid fever could produce temps as high as forty degrees, though usually not at the onset. It produced enlargement of the spleen, as well, which frequently resulted in abdominal pain.
"Are you in pain?" she asked. "Where does it hurt?"
His eyes flickered half-open again, and his hands moved restlessly on the coverlet. That was a symptom of typhoid fever, that restless plucking, but only in the last stages, eight or nine days into the progress of the disease. She wondered if the priest had already been ill when he came.
He had stumbled getting off his horse when they arrived, and the monk had had to catch him. But he had eaten and drunk more than a little at the feast, and grabbed at Maisry. He couldn't have been very ill, and typhoid came on gradually, beginning with a headache and an only slightly elevated temperature. It didn't reach thirty-nine degrees until the third week.
Kivrin leaned closer, pulling his untied shift aside to look for typhoid's rose-colored rash. There wasn't any. The side of his neck seemed slightly swollen, but swollen lymph glands went with almost every infection. She pulled his sleeve up. There weren't any rose spots on his arm either, but his fingernails were a bluish-brown color, which meant not enough oxygen. And cyanosis was a symptom of cholera.
"Has he vomited or had loosening of his bowels?" she asked.
"Nay," Lady Imeyne said, smearing a greenish paste on a piece of stiff linen. "He has but eaten too much of sugars and spices, and it has fevered his blood."
It couldn't be cholera without vomiting, and at any rate the fever was too high. Perhaps it was her virus after all, but she hadn't felt any stomach pain, and her tongue hadn't swollen like that.
The clerk raised his hand and pushed the rag off his forehead and onto the pillow, and then let his arm fall back to his side. Kivrin picked the rag up. It was completely dry. And what besides a virus could cause that high a fever? She couldn't think of anything but typhoid.
"Has he bled from the nose?" she asked Roche.
"Nay," Rosemund said, stepping forward and taking the rag from Kivrin. "I have seen no sign of bleeding."
"Wet it with cold water but don't wring it out," Kivrin said. "Father Roche, help me to lift him."
Roche put his hands to the priest's shoulders and raised him up. There was no blood on the linen under his head.
Roche laid him gently back down. "Think you it is the typhoid fever?" he said, and there was something curious, almost hopeful in his tone.
"I know not," Kivrin said.
Rosemund handed Kivrin the rag. She had took Kivrin at her word. It was dripping with icy water.
Kivrin leaned forward and laid it across the clerk's forehead.
His arms came up suddenly, wildly, knocking the cloth backwards out of Kivrin's hand, and then he was sitting up, flailing at her with both his hands, kicking out with his feet. His fist caught her on the side of her leg, buckling her knees so that she almost toppled onto the bed.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Kivrin said, trying to get her balance, trying to clutch at his hands. "I'm sorry."
His bloodshot eyes were wide open now, staring straight ahead. "Gloriam tuam," he bellowed, in a strange high voice that was almost a scream.
"I'm sorry," Kivrin said. She grabbed at his wrist, and his other arm shot out, striking her full in the chest.
"Requiem aeternum dona eis," he roared, rising up on his knees and then his feet to stand in the middle of the bed. "Et lux perpetua luceat eis."
Kivrin realized suddenly that he was trying to sing the mass for the dead.
Father Roche clutched at his shift, and he lashed out, kicking himself free, and then went on kicking, spinning around as if he were dancing.
"Miserere nobis."
He was too near the wall for them to reach him, hitting the timbers with his feet and flailing arms at every turn without even seeming to notice. "When he comes within reach, we must grab his ankles and knock him down," Kivrin said.
Father Roche nodded, out of breath. The others stood transfixed, not even trying to stop him, Imeyne still on her knees. Maisry pushed herself completely into the window, her hands over her ears and her eyes squeezed shut. Rosemund had retrieved the sopping rag and held it in her outstretched hand as if she thought Kivrin might try to lay it on his head again. Agnes was staring open-mouthed at the clerk's half-exposed body.
The clerk spun back toward them, his hands pawing at the ties on the front of his shift, trying to rip them free.
"Now," Kivrin said.
Father Roche and she reached for his ankles. The clerk went down on one knee, and then, flinging his arms out wide, burst free and launched himself off the high bed straight at Rosemund. She put her hands up, still holding the rag, and he hit her full in the chest.
"Miserere nobis," he said, and they went down together.
"Grab his arms before he hurts her," Kivrin said, but the clerk had stopped flailing. He lay atop Rosemund, motionless, his mouth almost touching hers, his arms limply out at his sides.
Father Roche took hold of the clerk's unresisting arm and rolled him off Rosemund. He flopped onto his side, breathing shallowly but no longer panting.
"Is he dead?" Agnes asked, and as if her voice had released the rest of them from a spell, they all moved forward, Lady Imeyne struggling to her feet, gripping the bedpost.
"Blackie died," Agnes said, clutching at her mother's skirts.
"He is not dead," Imeyne said, kneeling beside him, "but the fever in his blood has gone to the brain. It is often thus."
It's never thus, Kivrin thought. This isn't a symptom of any disease I've ever heard of. What could it be? Spinal meningitis? Epilepsy?
She bent down next to Rosemund. The girl lay rigidly on the floor, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands clenched into whitening fists. "Did he hurt you?" Kivrin asked.
Rosemund opened her eyes. "He pushed me down," she said, her voice quavering a little.
"Can you stand?" Kivrin asked.